A 52-year-old busi­ness­men lost Rs1.02lakh af­ter a man took his debit card through sleight of hand on Mon­day.

The ac­cused then with­drew money and bought an ex­pen­sive watch. The com­plainant Ram­jee­van Ganganore, a res­i­dent of Wa­gle Es­tate, went to the ATM kiosk to with­draw money.

“He found that the ma­chine was not work­ing prop­erly. A man, in his early thir­ties, who was stand­ing nearby, jumped to his as­sis­tance. He took the card from him and asked him his pass­word,” said a po­lice of­fi­cer from Thane Na­gar po­lice sta­tion. He re­turned the card to Ganganore, say­ing there was some prob­lem. But, the ac­cused re­turned a fake debit card and kept Ganganore’s card with him.

The next day, Ganganore got a mes­sage on his mo­bile phone about Rs25,000 deb­ited from his ac­count. His debit card was used to buy a watch cost­ing Rs52,800 from a Dadar shop. “Af­ter some­time, Rs25,000 was with­drawn from the ATM at Shiva­ji­path,” added the po­lice of­fi­cer.